GuildPortal FAQ

F.A.Q. Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How Long has GuildPortal Been Around?

[Last updated 5/12/2012]

GuildPortal has been providing guild hosting and management services since October, 2001. Over four hundred-thousand guilds, and their over four million members, have passed through our gates since then. Each day, we are visited by tens of thousands who call GuildPortal their guild's home on the web (for more hard data, see the end of this entry).

It hasn't been uneventful. The arena we work in is full of examples of guild hosting companies (and even the games they support) falling to complacency, disinterest in the support side of things, or a simple failure to rise to the needs and challenges presented by their clients, the possibly most unique, diverse, and savvy group of people you could hope to meet. They are the guild leaders, officers and members who play Massively Multi-Player Online games.

More, they are participants in a shift at the very core of what we call "entertainment." They live in homes where, with the possible exception of one or two shows, the television has had its one-sided conversation ended with the push of the power button on a remote, in favor of one interactive world or another, where they and their friends are the feature. They demand more and more of the world-building companies as the years go by, pushing said companies to do things they'd before said were just not possible. For example, I personally remember a conference at the E3 where an informed gentleman on a panel told us that clothing would never flow, and grass would never sway, in an MMO.

Along with the demands and desires they have for the games they play, go the requirements they have for the web hosting providers they use for their guild web sites. We at GuildPortal have re-focused our attention on what got us so far in the first place -- close contact with the people we serve. Whether through support tickets or via the Help Community, whether a new feature request or something just not working the way it should, our aim is to work with our admins and members the way we did when it all started -- by making them major decision makers and an integral part of the team.

We chose to start GuildPortal because we loved what MMOs represent, we continue to do it because of the people whom we feel honored to serve, and we have seen that those who do not (whether game, guild hosting provider, or any other business) find themselves eventually as muted as a television show during raid time.

The most recent month's data, provided by Google Analytics, records 2.4 million visits totalling 12.8 million page views. The majority of visits are direct (the visitor types our address in manually) with 57.09%, organic search engine traffic comes in second at 25.48%, and finally referring sites (visitor clicks on a link left by someone else) accounting for 17.43%.